Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

There were two reasons why persons of any abilities, that attempted this kind of music, could not help meeting with success. The first is, that without doubt they pitched upon such pieces, as in the course of reciting, they had been accustomed to render particularly expressive; or at least they imagined some such. The second is the surprise, which this music must needs have produced by its novelty. The greater the surprise she greater the impression of the music.

Attention | Circumstances | Object |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

With regard to natural cries, this man shall form them, as soon as he feels the passions to which they belong. However they will not be signs in respect to him the first time; because instead of reviving .his perceptions, they will as yet be no more than consequences of those perceptions.

Character | Necessity | Order | Present | Words |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

These two arts associated themselves with that of gesture, their elder sister, and known by the name of Dance. From whence there is reason to conjecture, that some kind of dance, and some kind of music and poetry, might have been observed at all times, and in all nations.

Attention | Giving | Order |

Eudora Welty

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

Events | Order |

Eugene Peterson

Two biblical designations for people of faith: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple (mathetes) says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. We donÂ’t learn in a school, but at the work site of the craftsman. We seek not to acquire information about God but skills in faith.

God | Office | Order | Religion | Thought | God | Think | Thought |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

To produce harmony, the cadences ought not to be placed indifferently. Sometimes the harmony ought to be suspended, and at other times it ought to terminate with a sensible pause. Consequently in a language, whose prosody is perfect, the succession of sounds should be subordinate to the fall of each period, so that the cadences shall be more or less abrupt, and the ear shall not find a final pause, till the mind be entirely satisfied.

Government | Ideas | Order | Government |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

The kind human gain much that that the virtue was less laborious.

Happiness |

Eugene Peterson

God does not want us neurotically dependent on him but willingly trustful in him. And so he weans us. The period of infancy will not be sentimentally extended beyond what is necessary.

Order |

Eugene Peterson

Forgiveness is the last word. I take no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table.

Attention | Focus | People | Will | World | Wrong |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Child labor must be abolished by the working class.

Better | Comfort | Culture | Day | Health | Labor |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

Attention | Mind | Writing |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.

Good | Health | Rule | Will | Old |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

Better | Man | Order | Prison | System |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is vice to go to bed with someone you are not married to or have someone of your own sex or to get money for having sex with someone who does not appeal to you - incidentally, the basis of half the marriages of my generation.

Need | Omnipotence | Order |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.

Experiment | Freedom | Law | Lesson | Order | Will | Work | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

What is in question is a kind of book reviewing which seems to be more and more popular: the loose putting down of opinions as though they were facts, and the treating of facts as though they were opinions.

Age | Attention | Land | Order | Past |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I do not oppose the insane asylum — but I abhor and condemn the cutthroat system that robs man of his reason, drives him to insanity and makes the lunatic asylum an indispensable adjunct to every civilized community.

Enough | Fortune | Man | Men | Nothing | Order | Work |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.

Order | Society | Society | Govern |